Let's talk about testing

Which Android versions are most important for testing?

In the last few months Android Nougat (7.0/7.1) has started to gain market share according to the statistics that Google published. From previous new Android versions, we’ve seen that it takes about 6 months to gain more than 5% market share. Another sign of change is that Android 6.0 growth is slowing down. Here you can apply the same rule of thumb that within 6 months, this version will not increase its market share any more, instead the numbers will start to decline instead. And last but not least, Android 5.1 is finally showing a drop in market share.

I was a bit surprised by this last fact. This is because after the stagefright android bug, I assumed manufacturers would put more effort into upgrading their devices to the latest versions. Even if manufacturers have taken some steps in that direction, we’re far away from devices that can be used for more than a couple of years.

In my previous blogpost I promised to give you more insight into the screen size and density statistics. I’ll start with the Android versions/names and below that you’ll find the new screen-related statistics.